


Early Warning Signs

by Defira



Category: Star Wars: The Old Republic
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-07
Updated: 2014-08-07
Packaged: 2018-02-10 22:29:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2042679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Defira/pseuds/Defira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the newly appointed Commander of the elite Republic special ops unit known as Havoc Squad, Ellaz Hervoz is on shaky ground with her executive officer, the also newly demoted Aric Jorgan. United by their unflinching devotion to the Republic and its citizens, they nonetheless tend to rub each other the wrong way more often than not. Alone together on Taris for their first unsupervised venture, Ellaz tries Aric's patience further than normal when she risks their time-sensitive mission on a foolish errand that threatens both their lives. </p>
<p>With the assistance of Sergeant Dorne, their contact and potential candidate for the role of medical officer on the squad, Aric has to work with a deck stacked against him in order to save not just his reputation, but the life of his Commander and the safety of the entire Republic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"You want me to do _what_ now?" Ellaz asked incredulously; Aric couldn't say he blamed her for her skeptical tone. 

"You're a perfect specimen," Doctor Cel assured, far too cordial as she reached forward and patted the commanding officer of Havoc Squad on the arm. "You've already spent how many days in the swamps, in the most heavily infested areas, and not even your scratches have turned septic."

"There's a difference between a few unlucky scratches and letting one of those critters purposefully gnaw on me," Ellaz said wryly. "And I'm not really that fond of being referred to as a specimen- like to consider myself a little more intelligent than a smear on a petri dish. Or, you know, more attractive."

She winked at Aric and he rolled his eyes, arms still crossed over his chest. "Commander," he said pointedly, "we're here on a rather tight schedule."

"Eh, what's the worst thing that could happen?"

"You turn into a slavering monster and Nee- our quarry gets away," he said flatly, correcting himself at the last minute so as not to admit aloud that they were hunting Republic traitors.

Taris wasn’t anywhere he wanted to spend more time than necessary, but Ellaz- _Commander Hervoz_ , he corrected himself- seemed determined to spread the good name of the Republic to every corner of this swampy cesspit. Despite the time sensitive nature of their mission, she couldn’t seem to walk past someone in difficulty.

No matter how loudly he protested, she seemed to view it as her personal responsibility to restore Taris to its former glory- or, at least, to do a good chunk of the work required for such an undertaking. 

And apparently, she now seemed to think it her civic duty to go and wrestle with the mutated monstrosities that lurked in the swamps and were all that remained of the city-world’s original population. 

Or she was at least warming to the idea. 

"I'm only a slavering monster if I haven't had my coffee in the morning," she said, far too sure of herself and almost painfully cheerful. "Besides, the doc might be onto something- I've barely had a sick day in my life, and this'd do some real good for the folks in these parts."

He gritted his teeth, feeling his ears flatten against his head in frustration. "A minute ago you were skeptical; now you're flat out convinced of this lunacy?"

"What you call lunacy I call optimism, Jorgan," she said, winking and turning back to the doctor. "I'm in- let's do this before my XO's common sense becomes contagious."

“Splendid!” The doctor’s enthusiasm did little to soothe his hostility towards her and he crossed his arms stiffly, refusing to take part in the foolishness. Her eyes skittered to him nervously for a fraction of a second before she turned her attention back to Ellaz- apparently a six foot cathar in tactical armour carrying an assault cannon wasn’t worth a second glance. “If you’ll just accompany me back to the med tent, we can get you prepped.”

Ellaz followed after her without hesitation, and Aric sighed loudly. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” he said pointedly, making sure his voice carried all the way to Doctor Cel. 

“You can ignore him,” Ellaz said candidly. “He’s a perpetual grump.”

The doctor laughed nervously, the sound tapering off rather quickly. “I’ll, ah, defer judgement in that matter to you, Commander,” she said noncommittally, ushering the two of them into a spacious tent deep within the ruins of Waypoint Station Aurek. Ellaz wandered over and began casually inspecting the table piled high with medical equipment, while Aric stood rigidly just within the entrance. “Please, if I can just show you the release forms and have you sign them, we can-”

“Release forms? For what?”

“For the Commander to accept the consequences for what she is about to undertake, and in the event of her unlikely death-”

Aric snorted a laugh of disbelief, shaking his head in derision but remaining silent when Ellaz shot him a warning glare. 

“... in the unlikely event of her death,” Doctor Cel continued, “the forms release the Republic Science Division of any responsibility and prevent any future legal action.”

When Ellaz reached for the datapad, Aric couldn’t help himself. “You _cannot_ be serious!” he snapped, his claws extending even though his hands were balled into fists. 

She barely even glanced at him. “It’s a standard medical disclaimer, Jorgan,” she said, signing the datapad with a flourish. “What, you never had surgery before?”

“I consider this situation to be a little more severe than a medical disclaimer,” he said, struggling to keep his voice done. “Do you even-”

“ _Jorgan_ ,” she said, her voice a little sharper now. The sparkle of humour was gone from her eyes, and though she wasn’t quite tall enough to look him in the eyes, he could _feel_ her looking down on him and he fought the urge to shrink backwards under her steely eyed glare. It was easy to forget, sometimes, that this was a woman who had stormed through the ranks to take command of one of the most decorated squads in the entirety of Republic space and instead just see her a jokester with a chronic inability to take things seriously. 

But Ellaz Hervoz was terrifying- she was just rather good at hiding it most of the time. 

He cleared his throat and dropped his gaze. “Apologies, Commander,” he said stiffly. “Please, continue.”

“Why, _thank you_ Aric,” she said brightly. “Glad to know I have your approval.”

He kept his eyes averted. “I wouldn’t exactly call it that,” he muttered, glancing her way when he heard her chuckle.

“And I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she said. 

She shucked her armour with practised ease, snapping open the locks that kept it snug around her chest and hoisting it over her head; for a moment, the shirt underneath her armour rode up with it, exposing dark brown skin that was smooth but for the occasional scar that ribbed the surface. 

Interest sparked to life in his belly, a fizzy warmth that threw him off balance; he looked away with a scowl as she tugged her shirt back down to cover her stomach, apparently unaware of his momentary distraction. It wasn’t that he wasn’t attracted to humans- although truth be told he _hadn’t_ ever had a human turn his head before- and more the fact that he had no interest in mixing up his professional life and his personal life. Things between him and the Commander were terse enough already, and he didn’t want to think about how much worse it’d be to be stuck alone on the ship with her if he was entertaining an inappropriate attraction to her. 

Wait, she _was_ attractive already, but he didn’t want to be- that wasn’t...

He huffed out a breath as his ears twitched, and stared pointedly at the tent wall, abruptly glad that he didn’t have to worry about a blush giving him away. 

“Alright doc,” she was saying, hands on her hips and a stupidly confident smile on her face, “let’s get the fun started.”

Aric didn’t interject as Doctor Cel swabbed at her arm with antiseptic wipes and rattled off a list of symptoms Ellaz could look forward to experiencing in the next forty-eight hours; he did fight back a wince at some of the more excruciating ones.

They didn’t have time for this- stars only knew how long this nonsense would keep them occupied, especially when any moment now Needles could catch wind of their arrival on Taris. He bristled at the thought of the old squad doctor- out of all the old Havoc soldiers, Needles was the only one he had no trouble imagining as a traitor. The man was a sadist through and through, and defecting to the Empire meant that there was no one looking over his shoulder to curb his creepy ambitions. 

It was crucial that they put a stop to whatever he was up to, yet here they were- he, staring at a wall to avoid looking lasciviously at his commanding officer, and she half dressed and about to go and deliberately infect herself with one of the most devastating diseases known in the entire galaxy. 

Elders help them. 

Ellaz didn’t even flinch as the doctor administered the vaccine, rolling her shoulders back as if cracking a kink out of her muscles once it was done. “I guess there’s not much point to putting this back on,” she mused, running her hand over the armoured chest plate. 

Aric blinked, not quite sure he’d heard her. “Commander?”

“I can just strap it onto my pack,” she continued, reaching for where she’d stowed her field kit. “It’ll collapse down flat and-”

“Have you gone _mad?_ ” Ellaz paused, eyes narrowed as she turned towards him. “I’ll play along with this nonsense to an extent, but you’re not running out into a dangerous and contaminated area without protective gear.”

“I didn’t realise I was taking orders from you, _Sergeant_ ,” she said, pointedly stressing his lower rank.

“This isn’t subordination, this is just common sense,” he snarled, stabbing a finger forcefully in her direction. “You want to do this, fine, that’s your prerogative and it’s not my place to interfere. But there’s a difference between putting yourself in danger and throwing your life away through stupidity, and you’re on a crash course for the latter.”

She stared at him for a few tense moments, and he steeled himself for the dressing down he was sure was coming. Doctor Cel busied herself at her work bench, pretending that because her back was turned she couldn’t hear their confrontation. Finally Ellaz crossed her arms slowly, cocking her head to the side. “You got anything else you wanna say, Jorgan? Throw it out there while we’re being honest?”

His face heated and he gritted his teeth, jaw jutting out defiantly. “You only need a scratch to get the plague- you don’t need to get mauled, and that’s exactly what’ll happen if you go out there in civvies. And if you insist on taking such a foolish risk, I will-” He hesitated for a brief second before charging onwards, “-I will be forced to contact General Garza to inform her you are endangering the mission.”

“Going over my head,” Ellaz said calmly, raising an eyebrow. “That does seem to meet the requirement for subordination.”

“Your duty first and foremost is to serve the Republic as the Commander of Havoc Squad, and that comes with specific obligations,” he retorted. “And as important as this sort of project is to the future of the Republic, if it interferes with your ability to complete our mission on Taris, a lot more people are going to be in far more immediate danger than just the settlers here.”

She stared at him for a few moments longer, until finally she cracked a smile and broke away from his gaze; he blinked in surprise, unable to believe that for once _she’d looked away first_. 

“Alright Jorgan,” she said with a chuckle, “you make a persuasive argument.”

He had the most absurd desire to preen in triumph. “I still consider it unfortunate that I needed to make such an argument in the first place.”

She was halfway through pulling her armour back over her head, and through the gaps he saw her roll her eyes. “Ugh, you’re such a spoilsport,” she said as she popped up through the neck, tugging it securely into place and snapping closed the locks.

“Sorry that I felt it necessary to stop you from getting mauled to death?”

She beamed at him. “Apology accepted,” she said, fiddling with her arm guards and then sliding her assault rifle back into place between her shoulders. “Now let’s go find ourselves some rakghouls.”


	2. Chapter 2

Taris had once been a city planet of great renown, comparable to Coruscant- now it was nothing but a crumbling graveyard, the skeletal remains of the vast buildings slowly being reclaimed by the swamps and the forests. There was beauty to be found in the silence, when they weren’t being shot at by scavengers or chased by mutated beasts, but it was also frustrating in a way that was hard to express. To see the Republic expend so many resources and personnel in the pursuit of restoring Taris, while Cathar lay neglected and irrelevant.

Taris was the sort of tragedy that could become a heartbreaking triumph for the forces of good; Cathar represented the greatest shame and failure.

It wasn’t like you could spend copious amounts of money in the hope of undoing genocide, after all. 

But it was a quiet frustration that he kept to himself, gritting his teeth in annoyance when they talked to human settlers still starry eyed with the prospect of reclaiming the past. It was the sort of private pain that had no place on a mission like this- it served no purpose to him or to Havoc Squad for him to get worked up about the evident human bias in Republic affairs. 

So in a way, he felt like he should have been grateful to Ellaz, because at least she gave him plenty of opportunities to take out his anger on the unsuspecting rakghoul- and she didn’t back down from him in an argument either. After the morning’s stand-off in the medical tent, he had a hankering to vent it all in the direction of the swamp’s inhabitants. 

They headed north through the ruins, skirting the edge of an old hospital- the medical symbol on the side still had a few flecks of paint remaining, a sad reminder of everything that had been lost in the destruction. They encountered a few smaller packs of rakghoul, two or three of the smallish brutes that barely came past his knee as they lunged and clawed; they dispatched them with ease, Ellaz frowning through her combat visor as if she’d expected simply to catch the plague from proximity alone. 

When they killed their fourth group without incurring so much as a scratch, she eyed him carefully. “You know,” she said casually, “I could just take off-”

“Commander, with all due respect, you probably shouldn’t finish that sentence.”

“What if I’d finished it with ‘take off all my clothes and seduce you’?”

The memory of her smooth, dark skin made his face heat again, and he was grateful that hi fur didn’t give him away when he blushed. “Then I’d remind you that you _definitely_ shouldn’t finish that sentence, because a toxic swamp is no place for mutual nudity.”

She laughed heartily, and he couldn’t help but smile in return. “You should let that sense of humour out to play more often, Jorgan,” she said, hefting her gun. 

“What, and lose my reputation?”

They headed deeper into the swamps, the sunlight filtering weakly through the thick trees and the decaying buildings. Taris was very much _not_ a dead world, noisy and unsettled in a way that wasn’t precisely pleasant. The constant whine of metal structures succumbing to the elements was interspersed with the occasional heart-stopping shriek of something giving way, and the ground would rumble as some ancient tower finally gave up the fight. Sometimes the earth beneath their feet shifted, sometimes violently, a reminder that this city had once been as layered and complex as Coruscant, and the ground beneath them had no guarantee of being solid.

He tried not to think of the dirt dissolving beneath his boots, flinging him into dark tunnels long abandoned but for the howling rakghouls slavering for a fresh meal. 

When the swamp belched and bubbled furiously, he eyed the pools with suspicion, and gave those areas a particularly wide berth. 

It was humid, the heat building beneath the canopy as the swamp gases grew thicker. Ahead of him, Ellaz kept waving her hand in front of her face in aggravation, and he allowed himself a moment of satisfaction. “It’d be a shame if someone came out here without protective gear on,” he called forward to her. “The bugs alone could drive a person crazy.”

“How much do I have to pay you not to be smug about that?” she called back, cussing under her breath as she swatted more away from her exposed chin. 

“As a proud soldier of the Republic, I am honour bound not to accept bribes.”

“Smart ass.”

Occasionally it was almost pretty, in a way that set the hair on the back of his neck, on end. There was something peaceful about the wildness of it all, something primal and sad. Whether it was the way the light filtered down through the trees, bouncing off dull coloured pools, or the abundance of life that seemed determined to defy the expectations of a dead and poisoned world, it was almost soothing- especially after the weeks of smog and steel and stained sunlight on Coruscant. 

Of course, the moment he started to get too whimsical was the moment the swamp water leaked into his boot. He cursed quietly, but not so quietly that he escaped the notice of his Commander; Ellaz glanced over her shoulder at him, eyes hidden behind the visor but her lips quirked in a smile. 

Her relentless cheer was going to drive him to an early grave. 

She slowed to a halt, scanning their surroundings, and he came to a stop behind her, waiting for her verdict. 

“This looks promising,” she said, crouching on the crest of the hill as she surveyed the landscape before them. She gestured to the large crowd of rakghouls disturbing the water about a hundred yards downhill- he couldn’t tell if they were fighting or playing or attempting some violent kind of fishing. “Biggest group we’ve encountered so far, plus we’ve got the advantage of the high ground.”

“High ground is good if you want all of them to be dead before they get to us, but you’re still set on letting one of them have a go at you.”

“You can keep the high ground, and I’ll run down and draw their attention,” she said, indicating the path she’d take. “If I can get over to that rocky outcrop over there, they’ll only be able to come at me one or two at a time- meanwhile, from up here, you can pick them off at your leisure and reduce the size of the pack so I’m not swarmed.”

He crossed his arms to stop himself from throwing them into the air in frustration. “Of course, because we only want _one_ of them to gnaw on you and infect you with a virulent disease, not _seven_.” 

“I’m so glad you’re coming around to my way of thinking and aren’t being sarcastic in the slightest,” she said cheerfully. 

“I live to serve, Commander,” he said.

She stood from the crouch and began unbuckling her pack. At the look on his face, she held her hands up placatingly. “I’m not taking off the damn armour,” she said. “I just don’t want to go slugging through knee high mud and weeds with a fifty pound satchel on my back. That’s a bad idea if I fall over.”

He rolled his eyes, shucking his own pack. “Of all the things wrong with what you’re doing, _that’s_ the one you zero in on as a danger.”

Ellaz looked at him as if he had suddenly sprouted horns. “Of course,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, “I don’t want to drown. How embarrassing would that be- galactic hero and elite soldier, thwarted by pond. I’d be dead and I still wouldn’t be able to stand the shame of it.”

“Your priorities never cease to amaze me,” he muttered, halfway through assembling his sniper rifle. 

She checked the charge on her gun before pressing the datapad on her left wrist. “Comms channel test, check,” she said, her voice echoing through his helmet.

He paused in his prep work to flick the switch on his own wrist. “Comms channel active,” he said, glancing her way to see her nod in response. She tossed a fist sized droid into the air; it buzzed into life, no bigger than some of the insects flitting about, and drifted out over the swamp, holding steady at about twenty feet above their heads.

“Havoc One online,” she said, activating her battle computer in the datapad; he could see the faint flicker of diagnostics on her visor screen, and looked away before it made him dizzy. 

“Havoc Two, online.” The lights surged on his own helmet screen, the sensors blinking to life as the airborne droid fed data back to his onboard computers. Topographic lines appeared over the landscape, a careful grid to show any hidden pitfalls and traps. Little red flags appeared over every visible rakghoul- and over a few patches of dense foliage that he hadn’t noticed movement in. His own vital signs sat in the bottom left of the screen, appropriately peaked given that they’d just trekked through an overgrown swamp for the last half hour; for now the monitor was dull and discreet, but the display would flare angrily if it detected a discrepancy in his vitals. 

A few steps away, Ellaz looked up from counting her pulse grenades and grinned recklessly. “Alright then,” she said, “time to be heroes.”

Aric settled himself onto the ground, lining up the scope to zoom in on the bulk of the pack. Through the telescopic lens he could see the rakghoul in much finer detail than he preferred to, and he hissed in disgust at their repulsive features. 

Ellaz, meanwhile, had set off down the hill, keeping low to the ground and loping across the uneven ground at an impressive pace, given the weight of her armour. She skirted around the edge of the pond, keeping to the shadows and the parts of the shoreline that offered her a chance at cover, a brief flash of white and red amongst the greenery. 

He steadied his breathing, trying to ignore the way his heart seemed to be hammering in his throat, and kept the sight steady, his finger on the trigger. 

Finally she slowed, creeping up towards her chosen chokepoint with caution. The spot she’d picked was a few feet from the shore, and the water quickly rose up past her ankles and towards her knees. Through the scope, he saw her wince the moment her boots succumbed to the icy swamp water, and he chuckled under his breath. 

“Having second thoughts, Commander?” he murmured into the headset.

“That’d mean that you’d win, Jorgan,” she replied, somewhat breathlessly from the run. She reached the rocks, still half crouched and pulled her gun from the cradle on her back. “If it happens too often, you’ll get a big head, and it’s my duty as your Commander to keep you humble.” 

“Mm,” he mused, widening the scope slightly to keep an eye on the area around her, “you say that, but I’m the one nice and dry up on the hill.”

“Smart ass,” she whispered, for the second time in an hour. “Alright- prepare to engage.”

He swung the scope around as she pulled a grenade from her belt and lobbed it towards the nearest rakghoul. The beasts hadn’t noticed her creeping closer, and they all hissed and yowled as the grenade splashed loudly into the water, recoiling from the disturbance. There was a moment of confusion as they climbed over one another, aggravated and without a target, circling the space where the grenade had landed. 

Aric breathed out slowly, and pulled the trigger.

He’d timed it perfectly- the shot burned straight through one of the larger brute’s head a fraction of a second before the grenade detonated. The rakghoul lurched forward, dead before it hit the surface, just as a huge pillar of murky water exploded upwards and outwards, scattering the rest of the pack and sending more than one flying through the air.

“ _Come at me_ , ya’ snaggle-toothed assholes!” Ellaz yelled, almost gleeful as she opened fire on the survivors. 

This woman was going to be the death of him. 

The rakghoul pack howled in fury, a myriad of wild voices that set his fur on end. Almost as one they turned towards her and swarmed forward, clawing and slashing at one another in their frenzy to be the first to the prey. Aric picked his targets with care, thinning their numbers just enough that she could deal with them; when one of them thought to clamber up the rocks behind her, evidently to hurl itself at her from above, he sent a bolt through the damn thing’s face.

It landed back in the swamp with a dull splash, and he grunted in satisfaction.

Despite the fact that she had over a dozen creatures to contend with, Ellaz was holding her own quite well; in fact, it almost seemed a little too good, because he hadn’t seen any get close enough to scratch her. 

“Any time now, Commander,” he yelled through the headset, taking down another one that had launched itself at her from her blind spot. 

In hindsight, he should have realised it was too good to last. 

There was a roar that turned his blood to ice in his veins, and he spun around in time to see the largest rakghoul he’d ever seen lurching up out of the swampy water, black muck and rotten weeds still tangled around its massive limbs. He doubted he was even as wide as the damn thing’s thigh. The howl it let out echoed through the swamps, bouncing off the broken debris of the city, until it sounded like a cacophony of beasts descending on them from all directions. 

The smaller rakghouls shrieked and chittered, scattering in every direction to get out of the way of the behemoth- including past Ellaz, who stumbled backwards when one of them went hurtling through her legs and unbalanced her. 

Aric shook off the stunned horror that had gripped him and lurched into action, lining up the shot and hitting the monster rakghoul in the left shoulder.

The brute didn’t even slow down. 

Panic surged up in him. “Commander, get out of there!” he barked, shooting again and hitting it in the lower back. 

Ellaz regained her footing, planting her feet with a determination that made his heart stop cold. She swung her gun around and fired, almost point blank.

She wasn’t fast enough.


	3. Chapter 3

Aric shouted wordlessly, a sound that could have been her name if his heart hadn’t surged up into his throat and threatened to choke him, panic and adrenalin seething within him as the great brute landed atop her and shoved her down into the water.

There was a screech of electrical interference through their comms link as she went under the surface of the water, and he snarled violently, ripping his helmet off and hurling it away while his ears rang painfully. Panting, he stumbled to his feet, already staggering down the hill before he had his balance. 

Ellaz was nowhere to be seen; the water where she’d last been standing was frenzied and wild. He told himself that that had to be a good thing, that it meant she was still fighting, even as he skidded to an abrupt halt and fired twice in quick succession.The first shot went wide, but the second struck the rakghoul in the flank, and the wretched beast finally reacted to the pain. 

It lurched up and half out of the water, howling and roaring that monstrous guttural sound again. Aric’s ears were still ringing from the static, and he hissed in pain, ears flat against his skull as he kept firing. The next round struck it in the shoulder and it hunched backwards- and he got his first sight of Ellaz.

She broke the surface with a gasp, the front of her helmet smashed in and blood streaking down her face as she choked up swamp water. As he drew closer, he could see just how dark the water around her was, and he sent a heartfelt plea to the Elders that it was just the silt and mud stirred up from their brawling. 

Or if it had to be blood, let it be the damned rakghoul’s blood. 

The shots had been enough to distract it momentarily, but it turned its attention back to Ellaz with a snarl; a meaty paw, complete with horrifying talons, reached for her and she disappeared beneath the water again. 

The fear in his gut was twisting like knives, but he lifted the gun again. “Hey, ugly!” he snarled, rapid firing as the rakghoul lifted its head again. They were bad shots- there was no time to aim or stabilise- but he hadn’t spent years in an elite sniper unit for it all to come to nothing. Some of the shots went pinging past harmlessly, but a good number of them landed, the lasers singeing the great beast’s torso.

It bellowed in pain, half turning towards him- and at that moment Ellaz surged up out of the water, tactical knife in hand. She buried the blade in the rakghoul’s stomach and wrenched upwards, the force of it so violent that later he would shudder as he remembered it. 

With a great gurgling howl, the rakghoul finally succumbed to death and slumped down into the water- with Ellaz trapped beneath it. 

Tossing his rifle to the side, Aric sprinted the last few yards, sloshing through the knee high water to where the giant rakghoul was slowly sinking into the murk. He stumbled to a crouch beside the corpse, fumbling around in the water for her; he was rewarded by a gloved hand grabbing at him weakly, fingers twining desperately with his.

“Hold on, Commander!” he yelled, not even sure she could hear him under the water. Something broke a little inside him when he had to let go of her hand, feeling the way she reached for him in a panic, clawing at the underside of the beast. He took a quick step back, running a hand over his face as his pulse pounded in his ears; he had no idea how he was going to move a creature that size, especially without hurting her in the process.

It was a shame he couldn’t just stuff a grenade in its mouth; he had a perverse desire to see the damned thing strewn across the landscape in tiny pieces. 

The bubbles coming out from under the torso were lessening, so there was nothing else for it; he had to try something. With no better options, he grabbed at the rakghoul’s leg and heaved, hoping that dragging it toward the deeper water rather than the shore would at least make the body buoyant and easier to deal with.

Stars but the beast was _heavy_. He strained violently, his feet sinking into the soft mud the more he leaned back, scrabbling for purchase as he fought to move the immense corpse.

He grunted, feeling the silt moving beneath his feet. “ _Move_ , you ugly bastard,” he panted, hauling backwards with all his weight.

The panic had begun to grow within him- the horrifying possibility this could be it, this fool’s errand could be her death and he would be alone to face the consequences and the threat of a galaxy held hostage by his traitorous former comrades. 

He thought of her irrepressible smile, and her determination to help regardless of the cost to herself, and he heaved one last time, yelling in triumph as he finally felt the body move.

He lost his balance immediately in the soft ground and stumbled to one knee, the water sloshing up past his waist as he fumbled back to his feet. From behind him he could hear weak splashing, and he surged through the water to where Ellaz was buried. 

She was only an inch or two from the surface now, and he shoved the body, easier now that he’d shifted it that first crucial few feet. 

The water sloshed about and then Ellaz broke the surface, sucking in a breath and immediately choking up dark water, gagging violently as she struggled to breathe.

“Easy, easy,” he said, kneeling beside her. “You’re okay, it’s over. Just breathe.”

She was a terrible sight- the rakghoul had smashed in the front of her visor, obviously trying to maul her, and he couldn’t actually tell what of her face wasn’t injured. There were gouges all across her skin, most likely from the broken flexiglass of the helmet but also just as likely from teeth and claws. Her nose was probably broken.

He’d never been so grateful to see someone in his life, and for a moment that terrified him more than thinking she’d been dead. 

"Stars almighty, that hurt," she gasped, grabbing at him almost blindly as she struggled to sit up. He kicked the dead brute to the side, freeing her legs, before grasping her by the wrist and pulling her to her feet. She stumbled straight into him, hands clinging desperately around his neck. "I mean, I was expecting it to hurt, but _fuck_ -"

"Are you okay to walk?" he asked, cutting her off. His heart was still beating far too fast, hammering away at the inside of his ribs almost painfully. Seeing her fall under the onslaught of the rakghouls had been more terrifying than he wanted to admit. 

"Yeah, yeah I think so," she said dazedly, still sort of hanging off his shoulder. She was covered in blood, and there was a deep wound on her shoulder where the big brute had tried to savage her neck, aiming for the gap between her chest piece and her helmet.

The monsters were smarter than he'd expected- and she'd come damn close to death as a result.

"We'll get you out of the swamp and get you cleaned up, before an even worse infection sets in." He hauled her forward, and she stumbled along beside him, heavily favouring her right leg. "And then we'll have a talk about the idiocy of risking your own life and jeopardising a critical mission-"

"For the greater good of the Republic," she said, grinning weakly when he cast her a filthy look. “Who ate your helmet?”

She was slurring quite badly, and it took him a moment to work out what she’d said. “Gear’s replaceable,” he said pointedly, “and you are not.”

“Why, Aric, I didn’t know you cared.”

For some reason, the fact that she still had the energy to tease and joke and didn’t turn it towards her own survival rankled at him. “Save your breath, Commander,” he said stiffly. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”

“Are you being literal or figurative? Because I can see a lot of trees.”

Halfway to death and determined to be a jester every step of the way- the woman was a terror.

He dragged her back to the hilltop where they’d dropped their field kits and carefully eased her to the ground, propping her against one of the bags so that she wasn’t completely flat. The wound on her shoulder had come perilously close to several major arteries, including her left carotid. She needed extensive medical assistance urgently, but they were a good ways away from any of the Republic sanctioned outposts. 

There was a glazed look in her eyes, as if she was having trouble focussing on anything, and she was panting shallowly. “Everything’s a bit tingly,” she said.

“That would be a combination of the blood loss and the adrenalin wearing off,” he said, grimacing as he knelt down beside her. “Just grit your teeth and bear it.”

She made an odd noise and waved her hand weakly. “This is nothing,” she said, although she whimpered slightly when he eased the remain of her helmet from her head. “One of my brothers stole a speeder once and took me joy riding. He crashed it and sent me flying.” She tried to point up to her face. “‘s how I got the scar- was unconscious for two days.”

“And yet you went on to a career in law enforcement,” he said, emptying the med kit onto the ground beside them and rummaging through the tubes and stim syringes. He found an unused applicator of kolto gel and snapped the seal off with his teeth, spreading the healing goo liberally over her forehead. 

“I live to confound and aggravate you,” she murmured, her eyelids drooping as if she intended to doze off.

Panic set in again. “Which brother was that?” he asked quickly, trying to distract her from passing out. In all likelihood she probably had a concussion, at the very least, and brain damage was the last thing they needed while they were dealing with her injuries and her inevitable infection from the plague. “You refer to them interchangeably, I can’t even tell how many siblings you actually have.”

She smiled faintly. “Youngest of seven,” she said, her grunt of pain turning into a drawn out wail as he snapped open the locks on her chest plate and tried to ease it away from her wound. “Fucking _fuck_ -” 

“Eyes forward soldier,” he snapped. “Keep talking, you weren’t given permission to stop.”

There were tears in her eyes and she was breathing faster now, writhing as if in a fever. “Six brothers,” she stuttered, swallowing multiple times as if was having trouble with the shape of the words in her mouth. “All older.”

“How terrifying,” he said, sliding the chest plate from her torso as gently as possible. “I can only imagine what a handful that would have been for your parents.”

She was panting, eyes unfocused, and it took her multiple attempts to speak. “Not so bad,” she whispered, her word so faint that he had to lean in closer to hear her. There was a faint discolouration around her lips, the only visible sign of the blood loss in her dark skin. She cringed and squeezed her eyes shut as he smeared the rest of the kolto gel over her shoulder injury. 

There was an endurance stim amongst all the syringes, mostly a strength based formula that was designed for soldiers in the field who had to endure long treks between points of safety, and who might not have a chance to rest adequately in that time. It wasn’t precisely what she needed, but it had to be better than nothing. 

She barely even flinched when he injected it into her uninjured arm. Not a great sign. 

“Hold tight,” he murmured, hefting her in his arms. “There’s an outpost about half a click away. We’ll get a speeder and get you to someone who can help.”

She didn’t answer, but pressed her face firmly against his chest; he could feel her shaking, and she was cold to touch. 

He shook his head, gritting his teeth. “I don’t fancy having to tell those six brothers of yours that you’re not coming home,” he muttered. Making sure she was as comfortable as possible, he set off back through the undergrowth, back towards what passed for civilization in this wasteland.


	4. Chapter 4

He slowed the speeder to a crawl just on the outskirts of the Reclamation base, eyeing the sentries warily. They hadn’t precisely made their presence on Taris a secret, assisting the governor and various government departments in the rebuilding efforts, and everyone seemed to recognise the iconic Havoc insignia even if they didn’t know the two of them by name. If he pulled up with a mauled and blooded Commander unconscious in his lap, it wouldn’t take them long to put two and two together and realise she’d been attacked by the rakghoul. 

He’d heard the governor overriding the concerns of the building contractors earlier by reminding them of the six month quarantine, and that was the absolute last thing they needed right now. If Ellaz got locked away for the next half a rotation, there was no telling what the defecting soldiers of Havoc would achieve in that time.

She needed medical assistance, much more than his slapdash application of kolto in the swamp, but they needed secrecy. If he could get her back to the ship, they had the most advanced military field hospital available in the Republic navy, and C2 came equipped with basic medical programming. It was better than nothing- they’d be able to keep her stable until they could get to a medical station.

But that all depended on him being able to smuggle Ellaz all the way through the settlement and through the spaceport, without being stopped by customs or security droids. It’d been hard enough convincing the transport module droid not to call ahead to announce their arrival when he’d procured the speeder in the first place.

He rubbed at his face in frustration and glanced down at her, tucked securely against his chest and very much unconscious. He’d done his best to keep her alert and awake, but it’d been a losing battle, and at some point on the awkward trip to the outpost she’d stopped answering his questions and fallen into silence. The bleeding hadn’t stopped precisely, but it had slowed significantly- he attributed that more to the kolto than to any special care on his part. 

She was still trembling, and she’d broken out in a cold sweat at some point in the last half hour; her forehead was clammy to touch, and he didn’t want to think about whether it was the plague or whether she’d contracted some other damnably awful disease in that fetid water.

Their contact here on Taris, Sergeant Dorne- she had some kind of field medic training listed on her file, he remembered that much. General Garza had forwarded them full personnel files before they’d arrived, discreetly implying that Dorne’s commitment to law enforcement even above the call of duty might make her an ideal candidate for Havoc. Ellaz had studied her background extensively on the flight to Taris, but Aric hadn’t had the time- acting as logistics officer with no assistant meant that he’d had to spend long hours familiarising himself with the armoury and going over the old requisition forms with a fine tooth comb. 

Granted, he hadn’t _needed_ to do that, but it gave him a sense of control, analysing how the squad had performed in its heyday and determining where cuts needed to be made in the future. He was going to make Havoc into the most efficient squad in the Republic, or die trying.

That of course meant that he hadn’t had the time to assess just how rule-oriented Sergeant Dorne was likely to be- she’d gone against her supervising officer to assist special forces in hunting down Needles, but how would she react when faced with an infection risk that could threaten the entire Republic Resettlement Zone?

“I hope your instincts were right, Garza,” he muttered, awkwardly clawing at Ellaz’s tech belt to find her holocomm unit. There was thick black silt in some of the plastic seams, and he grimaced as he shook it over the edge of the bike. There was a little splatter of water on the ground, a dribble that threatened to run down his arm; hopefully nothing had made its way into any of the crucial systems, and it’d still work. They made military grade holocomms fairly hardy, but he couldn’t imagine that they’d had extensive test runs involving violent submersion while being mauled by a half tonne mutant. 

Only one way to find out; he pressed the button to connect to the most recent user, then pressed it down harder a moment later when nothing happened. It crackled to life, the audio snapping and hissing as it sent the request through to Sergeant Dorne. 

He felt a massive wave of relief when the visual feed finally connected; the sergeant stood at ease on the other end of the line, uniform perfectly pressed and not a hair out of place on her head. The relaxed line of her shoulders vanished instantly when she recognised him, chin coming up and snapping to attention. 

“Sergeant Jorgan,” she said sharply, “I apologise, I wasn’t expecting you to be on the line. Is the Commander-?”

“Ellaz needs help, Dorne,” he said quickly, afraid of losing the connection any moment, and more afraid that her brow would furrow and her spine would straighten and she’d call the entire base down on top of them. “The Commander’s in bad shape.”

Dorne didn’t waste any time- he appreciated her efficiency, at the very least. “I’ll alert the Chief Medical Officer immediately and prep the med bay,” she said. “How far out are you and do you require an evac?”

“Dorne, it’s not that-” He cut himself off, frustrated by the situation. “She probably has the plague. If I bring her in, she’ll go into quarantine.”

“That is the appropriate procedure for the situation.”

He’d expected her response, but it still exasperated him. “You _know_ why we’re here, Dorne. You know what it is we have to do- if she gets stuck here for the next half a solar rotation, _millions_ of people could die.”

“If she is indeed infected as you suspect, if the plague spreads beyond Taris we will have a much greater crisis on our hands,” she countered, although she didn’t seem as stern as she had a moment ago. “But I understand your concerns.”

He swallowed past the lump in his throat. “So... can you come out to meet us, or-”

She scoffed, cutting him off; if the line hadn’t been so distorted, he would have sworn she’d rolled her eyes. “I appreciate that in your naivete you might think me talented enough to perform life saving surgical procedures in a _swamp_ , sergeant, but if she’s in _bad shape_ -” She stressed the descriptor with distaste, as if she found such lack of detail to be woefully inefficient on his part. “-Then I will need to have her in a secure, sterile environment.”

They were going around in circles. “Well, then, I’m all out of ideas,” he snapped.

Elara didn’t answer immediately, her dissatisfaction with the situation written all over her face. Finally she sighed in frustration and turned to what had to be a computer terminal just out of sight of the holocall. 

“What are you doing?”

“I’m pulling up the duty rosters to determine who is on patrol at the moment,” she said tersely, her voice strained. “Given the right sort of prompting, there are those who would be willing to turn a blind eye to the situation.”

His nostrils flared and his ears flickered; he didn’t say _traitors_ outright, but the word screamed so loudly in his head that for a moment he saw red. 

Apparently his reaction was strong enough for her to take note, because she stiffened as if insulted. “These are not men and women of questionable morals, Sergeant,” she said. “I refer to the younger recruits who are perhaps more impressionable when faced with superior officers from a legendary regiment.”

It soothed his anger slightly. “If we’re caught, that’s a court martial offence for them.”

“The alternative is that you allow me to take Commander Hervoz into quarantine,” she snapped, “and given that you have already stressed that that cannot be an option, risks must be taken.”

They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence as Dorne worked out the best approach; Aric shifted awkwardly on the bike, his thigh going to sleep where Ellaz was slumped against him. She wasn’t a small woman, by any means, and he’d never been more uneasily aware of her muscular frame than he was now that she was pinning him to a speeder in the most unfortunate of circumstances.

“Can you upload your coordinates?” Dorne asked suddenly, interrupting the silence.

He fumbled one handed with the holocomm, pressing down firmly on one of the other buttons. A moment later, Dorne nodded. “Much obliged,” she said. “Alright- now you must do precisely as I say, or else I can’t guarantee our secrecy will be maintained.”

“Acknowledged,” he said, uncertainty churning in his gut. 

“In ten minutes, I will meet you at the speeder launching pad opposite the supplies and logistics warehouse. Do not slow through the checkpoints or give any indication that anything is amiss- fly straight through the base and do not stop.”

“There are guards at the launching pads,” he said pointedly. 

“Leave that to me,” she said, her tone confident. “The way will be open.” 

Ten minutes felt like it could be an eternity, but what choice did they have? He disconnected from the holocall and looked down at the woman in his lap. “You are not making a habit of this,” he muttered.

***

Ten minutes was what Sergeant Dorne had told him, and he wasn’t willing to risk a minute longer than that. He rode over the bridge towards the Resettlement Zone, doing his best to look nonchalant and completely uninteresting. Some of the turrets followed their path as they raced through the first line of defenses, but there were no shouts of alarm, no warning shots across the front of the bike. 

He’d risked switching places with Ellaz before approaching the base- he was hoping it’d be much less obvious how gravely injured she was if people thought they were just riding twin rather than cradling her in his lap. Hooking her arms around his waist to stop her from sliding to the ground unconscious had been a task and a half; he had them tucked rather firmly under his own arms, an awkward pose he wasn’t keen to repeat any time soon.

They approached the inner wall at speed, and he held his breath- but again, no one stopped them, no one thought them odd enough to call out a challenge. 

It seemed too easy, but damn it if they weren’t due for a bit of easy sailing. 

There were three guards on duty alongside the transport droid- and all three of them were standing towards the rear of the transport pad with their backs to the road, talking loudly between themselves and pointing into the trees in the distance. It was painfully obvious what they were doing, but he had no room for complaint.

Elara was waiting beside the droid, a firm grip on the mechanoid’s arm as they came into land. When it went to step forward to assist them with the dismount, as per its programming, she tightened her hold and shook her head ever so slightly. 

“Sergeant Dorne,” he said, straddling the bike awkwardly with both feet on the ground, “I await your instruction.”

She stepped forward, her expression dark. “Get her into the flatbed,” she said, gesturing to the hover freighter behind them that was usually used on military bases to move large quantities of food and munitions; right now it had a few duffel bags stacked to about waist high. Dorne had parked it across the curb, blocking the view from the road and shielding them from any prying eyes.

But still...

“ _This_ is your grand plan?” he muttered under his breath as he slipped off the bike, deftly catching Ellaz as she began to slide off after him. “Wander around in broad daylight, no distraction?”

“Sometimes the best way to avoid attention is to act precisely as expected,” she said, climbing aboard the hoverbed and moving towards the steering panel. “If you were to fly in screaming bloody murder, you’d rouse the whole base. But if you arrive without fanfare and without causing a scene, nobody will look at us twice.”

Aric set Ellaz down in the gap between the duffel bags, grudgingly acknowledging that she was hidden from any prying eyes they might have to pass. “And why are they staring off at the trees as if they’re expecting to see a Nar Shaddaa club show?” he asked, gesturing to the three guards.

“They were informed that a crucial SIS mission was underway and their discretion was required,” she said, starting the hoverbed with a stuttering rumble and moving away from the curb. She drove cautiously through the base, careful not to exceed the regulation speed limit. “Given the fact that knowledge of Havoc Squad’s arrival has been public gossip for the last sixteen hours now, they readily accepted my instruction.”

Aric eyed her with a newfound appreciation. “Not half bad, Dorne,” he said.

Her lips were a thin line across her face, her shoulders tight with tension. “Don’t thank me yet,” she said stiffly.


	5. Chapter 5

Elara parked the hoverbed in front of a building on the far side of the base, and Aric was certain he’d aged several years on the excruciatingly long drive over. He understood the reason for their slow pace, but it felt as if every second had stretched out to an hour, as if every moment out in the open was an opportunity for their duplicity to be exposed. He stared straight ahead, jaw clenched, just waiting for the cries of outrage when someone looked at them a little too closely. 

Even if he hadn’t been hurt, he was covered in mud and blood, his under-armour soaked through with rancid swamp water. He ached everywhere, and he squelched whenever he moved- really all he wanted was a searing hot shower and a good couple of hours to clean the silt out of his equipment. He looked like he’d been tied to the bottom of a speeder and dragged through a bog, and even if Taris wasn’t the most inviting of planets, his appearance was still odd enough to merit attention.

But their luck held, and he had no idea how, or what they’d done to earn the reprieve. 

It appeared to be some sort of warehouse, full of construction equipment going from the piles of girders stacked haphazardly by the loading bay doors; Elara pulled to a stop by the door, setting the hoverbed down with practised ease without even a bump on the uneven ground. Aric lurched into action immediately, dropping to one knee to scoop Ellaz into his arms. 

Elara had dismounted, and frowned as she watched him. “Try to take more care with her,” she said. “It won’t do her any good to be jostled about like that.”

He grunted in annoyance, a little too winded to try for anything more severe. “She weighs at least two hundred pounds dry,” he said. “She’s currently soaking wet and half dressed in heavy impact combat gear- I’d like to see _you_ try and lift her.” 

“Your sarcasm does not improve the situation, sergeant,” she said disapprovingly. She led them towards the personnel door, glancing worriedly over her shoulder; Jorgan followed as quickly as he could, struggling to find his second wind. His body had begun to wind down from the adrenalin and the panic, his muscles aching from having carried her for so long. Now that they’d had a five minute break, they were protesting at being used again. 

The warehouse was lined with steel frame shelves that stretched towards the distant roof- the open door allowed a small column of sunlight to creep in, illuminating the dust motes that hung heavy in the air. Elara marched briskly between the shelves and Aric did his best to keep up, Ellaz like an unpleasantly warm, damp weight in his aching arms. 

In the very far corner of the warehouse, hidden from view by a stack of crates covered with rough transport netting, was a hastily assembled med station, complete with a patiently hovering medical assistant droid.

He thought of the pristine medical bay back on the Defender and tried not to gnash his teeth in frustration. “Here’s hoping you’re a miracle worker, Dorne,” he said, laying Ellaz on the kit bed with as much care as possible. 

Elara’s face was pinched and white, her lips a thin line that conveyed all of her immense displeasure. “Allowing her access to Republic military facilities while compromised by a known contagion is in direct contradiction of regulation five seven-”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Aric snapped, lowering his voice when he realised how far the noise carried in the metal hallways. “You’re not the only one with an extensive knowledge of military laws and guidelines.”

“And yet _you_ come barging in expecting me to break several _dozen_ of them, all while assuming I can work wonders when faced with life-threatening injuries and severely limited resources,” she said sharply, not budging an inch. 

The reprimand stung, and was well earned- even more so given this mess was of Ellaz’s making, not his. “What was I supposed to do, leave her out in the swamps?”

“Entirely irrelevant point, sergeant.” She was fast at work, drawing a clear liquid from a sealed tube with a syringe, the medical droid behind her unpacking what appeared to be surgical equipment. “My point was that your hostility towards me is entirely unwarranted- and utterly unappreciated.”

That pulled him up short. “I- _damn it_.”

Elara’s only response was a slight quirk to the corner of her mouth, as if she was fighting back a smug ‘ _I told you so_ ’ smile.

“I would’ve tried getting her into the spaceport to get her onto the ship, but the droids would’ve been suspicious,” he said, realising how pathetic the excuse sounded even as the words left his lips.

He could almost _hear_ her roll her eyes.

He took a deep breath. “Dorne,” he said, hands on his hips; he waited until she looked up at him from the bedside. “Look, I was out of line- what you’re doing for Ell... I mean, the Commander, well...” He liked to be frank whenever possible, but it still stung his pride sometimes. “You’re going above and beyond the call of duty.”

“I have found that duty is a rather mutable concept, sergeant,” she said; she injected the contents of the syringe into Ellaz’s injured arm, taking to her combat fatigues a moment later with a pair of surgical scissors to expose the wound. Aric hastily looked away. “What is the right course of action and what is the bounds of your responsibilities sometimes diverge- and I’ve found it best to follow my instincts on those occasions.”

He grunted in surprise. “You sound like her,” he said, gesturing towards Ellaz. 

There was a flicker of green light, the droid’s scanner running over Ellaz’s body to assess the extent of her injuries. “You sound as if you disapprove,” Elara said, her voice strained as if she was concentrating. “I would have thought that would be something the two of you had in common.”

He crossed his arms and leaned against the crates, his muscles beginning to relax again while the various aches and pains began to clamour for attention. “Commander Hervoz tends to take a rather extreme stance on the matter,” he said wearily. “Case in point- wading into a swamp to wrestle with rakghoul because she wants to help the settlers.” 

“She- what?”

He rubbed tiredly at his face. “Some doctor over at Alpha talked her into trialling an experimental vaccine- bad enough in itself, but only she could take an already suicidal idea and turn it into a catastrophe.”

Dorne made a noise under her breath that sounded distinctly like a curse. “Ianna Cel,” she said. “A brilliant virologist, certainly, but she’s butted heads with the administration several times already. Her work has contributed greatly to the future safety of the resettlement project, but she has no concept of patience.”

“For someone working with viruses, you’d think she’d be better at it,” he said, attempting conversation for the sake of politeness, if nothing else. “You know, waiting for them to cultivate and for symptoms to set in and what not.”

“You’d think so,” Elara said wryly. “Sadly the medical profession does tend to encourage a certain kind of ego.”

At the thought of Needles, Aric’s lip turned up in disgust. “I could believe that,” he said, unable to keep the anger from his voice. He could hear the faint hiss and sizzle of the laser suture, and he risked glancing over his shoulder towards the bed. Ellaz looked a great deal cleaner than she had a few minutes earlier, a pile of wadded up chemical wipes lying discarded on the floor near Dorne’s feet. The medical droid was busily prodding at her broken nose, pushing it back and forth as if navigating the bones back into place. Elara was kneeling at the head of the bed, a fierce look of concentration on her face as she worked to close the wound on Ellaz’s shoulder, carefully massaging the flesh with each inch that she closed so as not to stretch the skin unnaturally. 

Elara glanced up at him, apparently aware of his interest. “She’s undergone a great deal of trauma,” she said bluntly, “and I can’t guarantee that my efforts will be effective. She really needs much more superior care than I can provide like this.”

“Can we patch her up enough that she’ll pass scrutiny with...” He trailed off as Elara shook her head. 

“She has to work the virus out of her system,” she said. “The facilities at any of the major outpost are all going to make that their first order of business, determining that she is not an infection risk. If she has any trace of the virus in her, she’ll be sent straight to quarantine.” 

He swore quietly. 

“Perhaps not the word I would have used for the situation, but yes.” Elara stood, going over to the med kit on the nearest crate and wiping the blood off of her hands on a waiting cloth. “While I can live in hope that the good Doctor Cel would not have been foolish enough to initiate human trials without the support of the Republic Science Bureau without good reason, I have given her a round of precautionary antivirals used to treat the plague in its early stages.”

Aric looked past her to Ellaz, who was stirring restlessly on the kit bed- as if she was uncomfortable, but not greatly enough to shake off unconsciousness fully and face the source of it. There was a thick line of pale scar tissue running up her collarbone and along the curve where her neck joined her shoulder, the skin around it dark and angry. It stood out against the rich brown of her skin, an ugly reminder of her foolish sense of immortality. 

The whole damned affair had shook him up more than he felt comfortable admitting to- she wasn’t some damned rookie running out blind on her first patrol. Ellaz was a woman with over a decade of experience in some of the most battle-hardened squads in the Republic military, and nearly as many years before that on Corellia working in various departments in CorSec. 

Yet she acted as if death was a foreign concept to her, as if her body existed outside the laws that governed the universe. 

He shut his eyes and rubbed at the space between them, feeling a headache building. 

“Here.” At Elara’s commanding tone he cracked open one eye, only to see her standing beside him with another syringe. “It’s your turn.”

He eyed the syringe warily. “I can promise you, only one of us got bitten.”

“And you then came into contact with her blood,” Elara said pointedly, “not to mention any incidental infections you might have contracted as a result of traversing irradiated swamps and coming into contact with what appears to be the gizzards of at least one unnamed creature.”

She pointed out a particular chunk of something unpleasant that was caught in the grooves of his chest plate, under his left arm, and which had apparently escaped his notice. It had to have been from the behemoth, from when Ellaz had gutted it. When he looked back up to Elara he could have sworn her expression was bordering on smug.

“Or shall I escort you down to the medical clinic and turn you over to the staff as a potential infection risk?”

He gave her a withering look, and then grudgingly reached up to shuck his armour. 

“Much obliged,” she said sweetly. 

Without the armour weighing him down, he was painfully aware of just how tired he was- those extra pound felt like they’d been the only thing pinning him to the ground, and he felt so weary and hollow that he was sure he was going to start floating. Elara didn’t gloat as she rolled up the short sleeve on his fatigues, and for that he was grateful.

He winced comically when he felt the tiny sting of the needle, and was rewarded with a faint chuckle from her. “I hardly think that’s the worst you’ve endured today, Jorgan,” she said, discarding of the needle in a sealed canister and then repeating the procedure on herself. “Do you have any injuries of your own to report?”

He rolled his shoulders back, feeling the cold of the medicine settle under his skin. “Nothing that a hot shower and a good night’s sleep won’t fix, but that’s a while off.”

There was a sound behind them and they both turned to see Ellaz blinking blearily, her face contorted into an expression of abject discomfort. “I was hoping being dead wouldn’t hurt so much,” she rasped.

“Pulse rate- elevated,” said the medical droid, whirring back to life and hovering over her, green light flickering over her at a rapid speed. “Internal temperature- elevated. Blood pressure- elevated. Inflammation noted in the following organs-”

“Report on screen only,” Elara commanded, coming to kneel beside the bed again. “Commander- how are you feeling?”

Ellaz seemed remarkably disoriented, struggling to focus on Dorne’s face. “Like... um...” She blinked twice, and then her eyes stayed shut. “I, um... don’t know.”

“If you could open your eyes for me, Commander, I’d like to do a quick scan, just to ascertain whether or not you’ve sustained any degree of concussion.”

“My insides are trying to become my outsides,” she said miserably, her voice pitiful. 

Aric couldn’t help but laugh- half dead, and she was still cracking jokes. “And whose fault might that be?” he asked.

“Definitely the Empire.”

“Is she always this incorrigible?” Dorne asked, shining a small light into Ellaz’s eyes, holding her chin firmly when she moaned and tried to turn away.

“This is possibly not one of her best days,” Aric said tactfully.

Ellaz groaned and made a motion as if she were about to be violently ill. Dorne lurched out of the way as Ellaz hung over the edge of the cot, gagging and shuddering. When nothing seemed to come of it but unpleasant sounds, she flopped back onto the bed, sucking in air as if she’d been choking.

“Elara,” Ellaz rasped, gesturing her back over to the bed weakly. Sergeant Dorne went obligingly, bending down beside her pillow so that she didn’t have to strain her voice. “Your file- you’re still on probationary status.”

Elara stiffened in alarm, and Aric finally realised what it was that had been hanging over Dorne’s head all night. “That is correct, Commander,” she said crisply, doing her best to look unaffected by the reminder. “Captain Kalor of Personnel Division is responsible for monitoring my case.”

“What’re y’doing?”

“Beg pardon, Commander?”

She coughed violently, chest heaving. “Why’re you risking it, for me?”

There was a flicker of something in Dorne’s expression- something so quick that Aric might almost have believed he’d imagined it, had he not seen the way her face transformed the moment after, the way her jaw squared and her eyes grew determined and proud. “Because it was the right thing to do, Commander.”

For some reason this seemed an utterly hilarious response to Ellaz, and she burst into a fit of hysterical giggles- only to be cut off when she lunged to the side again, losing the contents of her stomach on the floor of the warehouse. 

Aric took the opportunity to step around the corner and out of sight, feeling uncomfortably like he was intruding now that Ellaz was conscious. He stayed nearby, within hearing distance should Dorne need to call for assistance, but far enough away to give them privacy.

He sat down on a crate and waited. 

A few minutes passed before he heard footsteps behind him, and he turned to see Sergeant Dorne coming towards him, an odd expression on her face.

“What’s the verdict?” he asked by way of greeting.

“She’ll do fine with some rest- she’s a remarkably hardy individual, I have to say.” She clasped her hands in front of her. “She offered me the position of medical officer within Havoc Squad.”

“Congratulations,” he said, surprising even himself in that he meant it wholeheartedly. Even as recently as a month ago, he probably would’ve taken the news with resentment, still bitter about his demotion and the rumours clinging to his back. But Dorne had handled the afternoon’s events with the sort of tact and cool-headed patience that he found most admirable in his fellow soldiers, and if anything her determination matched that of the Commander. “Forgive me for saying, but you don’t seem overly thrilled.”

She smiled briefly. “I’m delighted, actually,” she said. “More than I can possibly say. But I’ll save the celebrations until later, once your- or rather, _our_ duties are completed.” 

“Just like that? Throwing yourself into it without knowing fully what you’re committing to?”

“Commander Hervoz is the sort of woman I left the Empire for,” she said softly. She glanced back over her shoulder to where Ellaz lay sleeping, a faint smile on her face. “And in best serving her, I best serve the Republic. I could ask for no greater honour.”

“Well then,” he said, holding out his hand to her, “in that case, it’s an honour to welcome you to Havoc Squad, Dorne.”


End file.
